Film review – Yesterday

Few films released this year have the remarkable pedigree of Yesterday. Its director is the Oscar-winning Danny Boyle, henceforth referred to as a national treasure because of his work on the Olympics opening ceremony in 2012, and its screenwriter is Richard Curtis, king of the heartfelt and intelligent romantic comedy. Its subject, likewise, could not be more quintessentially English if its cast were attired in Union Jack costumes and being driven around in red buses.

Boyle and Curtis have imagined a world in which, after a freakish electrical storm, no-hope singer-songwriter Jack Malik (newcomer Himesh Patel) finds himself the only person who still knows the songs of the Beatles, which have otherwise been wiped from history. Cue his unlikely rise to super-stardom. It should be heartwarming, witty and poignant, but it just isn’t. So what has gone so badly wrong?

Working Title, who produced the film, excel at Curtis-led romantic comedies, revolving around witty upper-middle-class people’s personal shenanigans. They have largely steered away from the grittier work that Boyle prefers; anyone who has seen Trainspotting, 127 Hours or Sunshine will know that he is a master at creating suspense and exploring the complex and often violent dynamics that exist between those pushed to their limits. Even Slumdog Millionaire, for all its feel-good trappings, does not stint on exploring the dark side of contemporary India. Therefore, he seems an odd choice to direct, and so, unfortunately, it proves. He manages to throw in some of his signature visual flair from time to time, but this must be his most muted and anonymous work, by a significant margin. This is, for better or worse, a Richard Curtis film, with Boyle as competent director-for-hire.

While Curtis can be a peerless explorer of the vicissitudes of the human heart About Time, his last film as a director, is a glorious exercise in smuggling a deeply moving account of father-son relations into the romantic comedy format – he fails to bring the central concept of Yesterday to any kind of meaningful life. Patel bears a permanent expression of uneasy bewilderment, which suits the character’s sudden rise to super-stardom well, but also conveys a sense that he is uncomfortable with the demands of the role. This is unlikely to lead to a breakout career for him in the way that Hugh Grant enjoyed after Four Weddings and a Funeral, or Dev Patel now has thanks to Slumdog Millionaire. He has a decent enough singing voice, and a low-key likeability, but his lack of charisma leaves a substantial void at the centre of the narrative.

There are also some serious narrative issues, which comes as a surprise from two veterans such as Curtis and Boyle. Jack becomes extraordinarily famous virtually overnight, thanks to the assistance of Ed Sheeran (gamely playing himself with the usual awkwardness of a non-actor) and we are supposed to think that the Beatles’ songs send the world into a frenzy. Wonderful though McCartney and Lennon’s music is, the average audience are unlikely to believe that, in 2019, most listeners would respond as well to the half-century old music if it was encountered for the first time. There is a touching optimism from both Curtis and Boyle – wealthy white men in their sixties – that teenagers and millennials would be as enamoured of songs such as “I Saw Her Standing There” if they were first heard today as their forbears were. Unfortunately, the film does little to convince us of this. There is a droll scene early on where Jack attempts to debut “Let It Be” in front of his distracted parents (Sanjeev Bhaskhar and Meera Syal, both game), and is unable to finish his performance, but for the rest of Yesterday, the canonical nature of the music is taken as read.

There are other flaws as well, some minor and some more irritating. A third-act development, involving a cameo by a well-known Boyle alumnus, is admittedly breathtaking in its audaciousness, and some will find it moving; others will be both mystified and offended by it. Kate McKinnon, as a ruthless music executive, brings a welcome touch of sarcasm and spikiness to the film, but is soon derailed by a role that never acquires a third dimension. There is the odd good joke – we discover that Oasis never existed in a Beatles-less dimension – but longer stretches of uneasy earnestness that lead the viewer to wonder why this isn’t more fun. And an appearance by James Corden, as himself, is as irritating and smug as you might expect.

Thank heavens, then, for the film’s saving grace, Lily James. She is stuck in a semi-thankless role as Jack’s manager, best friend and confidante, a maths teacher who has secretly adored him from afar for years, but James reminds us why she is widely regarded as the most exciting British film actress since Kate Winslet. She negotiates the various unlikely twists that her character is expected to go through with consummate skill and charm, at times rising to the level of grace of Julie Christie in Billy Liar, and gives the otherwise superficial antics a sense of weight. There is a big set-piece scene towards the end at Wembley Stadium, and what happens in it is both predictable and strangely unbelievable, but the image that lingers is that of James’s face, magnified to enormous size on a vast screen like something out of Blade Runner, slowly changing expression as she realises the magnitude of what is going on.

One leaves the cinema dissatisfied, even as the well-worn chords of “Hey Jude” come in, but at least Yesterday offers proof that James is a bona-fide film star. It’s just a shame that the vehicle that she’s in lets her down so badly.